5 things Steve Jobs said Apple would never do - and Apple is doing

Money/CNN ^ | 1/19/15 | David Goldman

[martin_fierro]

Go to the link for details, but herein I break it down for ya bruvva

• Introducing styluses
• Small iPads
• Large screen iPhones
• Lifelike-looking software/icons ("skeuomorphism")
• Restoring philanthropy

[Enlightened1]

LOL! Thanks

[Revelation 911]

doh

[KoRn]

Just “Look at the flowers”...

(you’re obviously crazy lol)

[DiogenesLamp]

In our modern world Steve Jobs was like Julius Caesar was in the ancient world, "Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus, and we petty men Walk under his huge legs and peep about To find ourselves dishonourable graves." and you, Diogenes, are certainly one of those petty men, who chooses to denigrate the man when he is dead.

And so his accomplishments are so great that you can't name one of them?

I guess i'll just have to put him in the "Bill Gates" category of "Genius".

[DiogenesLamp]

LOL ... you never did anything wrong as a teenager ... that’s a good one. Talk to ANY PARENT of a teenager ... :-) ...

What do you consider "wrong"? In the normal sense of the word, you know, lying, stealing, abusing substances, fornicating, being indolent, being disrespectful, I didn't do anything "wrong."

I was a "square" that had no strong compulsion to do things or think things merely because other people did so and thought so. I guess I've got sort of an independent streak.

[Yardstick]

It is definitely a cool word.

[Star Traveler]

The only person I know that didn’t do anything wrong ... as a teenager or an adult was Jesus. All the rest of us ... absolutely and without a doubt ... did wrong things.

[Star Traveler]

You’re weird and obsessive ...

[Swordmaker]

And so his accomplishments are so great that you can't name one of them?

I guess i'll just have to put him in the "Bill Gates" category of "Genius".

Depending on who you listen to, the number of industries Steve Jobs changed fundamentally ranged from THREE to SIX. Some doing the counting just did not know about all of the impacts Steve Jobs had on some industries. One of the funny things is that the lists vary between those who make them.

Here's a list of the six industries Steve Jobs revolutionized.

• Personal Computers — Twice
• Digital publishing & Typesetting.
• Digital Animation & the Digital Movie Industry
• Digital Music & the Music Industry
• Cellular Smartphones & Mobile Computing
• Tablet computing & Education with Digital Text books.

Computers, animation, music, movies, phones, the mobile web, tablets, yesterday someone suggested to me that Jobs deserved very little credit for changing these industries. In the sense that this person meant, he was right. Jobs didn’t really invent anything that we know him for. He never really took a completely original concept and personally brought it into existence and popularity purely through his own blood, sweat and tears. This picture of innovation is a novel one, but it doesn’t describe one of our generation’s most successful visionaries in the least.

Instead, Steve Jobs was a man with arguably more unique talents. People with ideas are a dime a dozen and the nerds to build the ideas are graduating with fancy degrees faster than we can find jobs for them. However, people that can truly take an honest look into an industry and identify what it’s lacking and what customers would truly go crazy for, then make that vision a reality, are a rare breed. Jobs performed this task better than anyone else I can name.

Everyone knew computers were the future. Steve Jobs put them in people’s living rooms. Everyone knew computer graphics were amazing, Jobs guided the people who made them the standard for animated films. Everyone knew that the world was going digital, Steve Jobs realized that the music industry’s answer to this trend was coming up short and needed to be rethought. Everyone already had a cell phone with a web browser, Steve Jobs oversaw a project that brought the two together like never before. Looking at any one of these stories, you could say that Jobs was merely in the right place at the right time. However, together they reveal a pattern and indeed tell a story. Pointless and unquestioning Apple worship aside, forgetting all the legend and lore surrounding Jobs, a simple look at the facts and how many industry-rocking projects he can stamp his name on reveal that the man is no fortunate receiver of profound luck, he was truly an incredibly talented individual with a propensity to revolutionize that which he touched — Source: "5 Industries that Steve Jobs helped change forever" —Joshua Johnson, August 26, 2011

In addition, Forbes Magazine, in October 10, 2011, reported that Edmunds.com had concluded that Steve Jobs was also responsible for a sea change in Automobile in-car entertainment.

How Steve Jobs Changed The Auto Industry

By Joann Muller

Apple CEO Steve Jobs didn’t just change the computer and entertainment industries. He also had a huge influence on automobiles. People now see their cars as an extension of their living rooms.

Here’s an excerpt from an article by Edmunds.com Senior Technology Editor Doug Newcomb:

Perhaps no external devices — or one company — have had as much impact on car infotainment as Apple’s iPod and iPhone. The iPod literally made CDs obsolete when it debuted a decade ago, and it soon became the default device for carrying music into the car. So much so that “iPod integration” became a focus for almost every automaker and an important part of the car lexicon.

More recently with the iPhone, Apple once again changed the rules of the in-car infotainment game. A $2,000 in-dash navigation system? Why would drivers need that when they have a navigation app on their iPhone. And we’re just starting to see the impact that apps, which Apple almost singlehandedly popularized, is having on automakers and their electronics strategy. And the Apple iPad is now putting the nail in the coffin of expensive rear-entertainment systems.

It’s been said that Apple could give a damn about the car, and automakers and suppliers have related stories about how difficult it can be to work with the Apple crew in Cupertino, California. Following the lead of the icon that ran the company over its heady past decade, Apple did what it wanted to do, the rest of the world be damned.

Then there is the MUSIC INDUSTRY. . . which honored Steve Jobs by awarding him a Grammy:

Steve Jobs Wins Grammy Award Posthumously

Thursday, December 22, 2011
By OP Editor

The Recording Academy: Steve Jobs and Apple changed the music industry, with Apple continuing to lead the way with new technology.

Steve Jobs wins Posthumous Grammy Award

Steve Jobs is one of this year’s GRAMMY Trustees Award honoree, which recognizes “outstanding contributions to the industry in a nonperforming capacity”:

“As former CEO and co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs helped create products and technology that transformed the way we consume music, TV, movies, and books. A creative visionary, Jobs’ innovations such as the iPod and its counterpart, the online iTunes store, revolutionized the industry and how music was distributed and purchased. In 2002 Apple Computer Inc. was a recipient of a Technical GRAMMY Award for contributions of outstanding technical significance to the recording field. The company continues to lead the way with new technology and in-demand products such as the iPhone and iPad.”

Other Grammy Trustees Award honorees are Jazz musician Dave Bartholomew and Rudy Van Gelder, an American recording engineer specializing in jazz. 54th Annual GRAMMY Awards is taking place on Feb. 12, 2012

Besides music industry with iPod, Steve Jobs also changed computing, telephony, publishing, and animated film industries. And due to iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, the former Apple CEO was also recognized as most influential person in gaming history.

Did you catch that last one???

How about Smartphones and mobile computing?

How Steve Jobs changed everything, and what we’ll miss without him" Digital Trends, by Jeffrey Van Camp, October 7, 2011

. . .

Reimagining the phone and freeing the app

As often seems to be the case, when I first heard about the iPhone, it didn’t seem revolutionary at all. “It’s just an iPod Touch with a cellular signal,” I thought. My view was shortsighted, and I quickly snapped in line. With the iPhone, Apple debuted the first truly user-friendly smartphone, and with the App Store, it unshackled the process of buying content from the hands of the wireless carriers, which were abusing both consumers and developers of content. Before the iPhone, feature phones and smartphones had app stores that reached only 200 to 500 apps deep. Users had a difficult time finding, installing, and using apps because wireless carriers controlled distribution on their own Internet portals.

Wireless carriers controlled everything:

• Carriers took between 40 to 60 percent of revenue from developers up front

• Carriers overcharged for apps ($5.99 to $12.99 was regular)

• Carriers made apps into subscriptions (charging users $2.99-$4.99 per month without any plan to add new content)

• Carriers controlled the placement of apps (no app could sell unless it was in the “Featured” category of a store)

• Carriers would reject apps from developers after they had spent thousands on developing and porting to hundreds of handsets

• Carriers would cut apps from the store quickly if sales weren’t up to par

• Carriers would reject apps that didn’t have brand potential

• Porting companies would charge tens of thousands of dollars to port an app to thousands of handsets

I saw this ugly system work up close when I worked as an app evaluator at a company that mediated between carriers and app developers. The carriers saw us as a place to put smaller developers that they didn’t want to work with directly, and developers saw us as a hinderence to reaching the carriers.

Life isn’t always great as a middle man. Thanks to the iPhone, the mobile content industry doesn’t need middle men anymore. Anyone with an idea can develop and publish an app on the App Store or on any of the blossoming competing stores like the Android Market. And because Apple pushed apps, the number of people who download apps has gone from about 5 percent to 95 percent (or more).

[Zathras]

#4 was probably decided under Jobs.
Some of Intel’s top designers went to Apple back in early 2000’s to help them with OS tweaks so dual boot MacOS would be an easy task.
I know one of the guys.

[Zathras]

#4 was probably decided under Jobs.
Some of Intel’s top designers went to Apple back in early 2000’s to help them with OS tweaks so dual boot MacOS would be an easy task.
I know one of the guys.

[Swordmaker]

You make Liberals seem fuzzy-nice...Got it SWORD SWALLOWER?

And you are an ass who uses insults. I have not insulted you or attacked you. Yet you persist in refusing to use my Freepname and sling insults to fellow Freepers just as any common variety Anti-Apple troll would do. You do not have any respect from me. . . nor will you unless you behave civilly. Quit acting like a jackass.

[Swordmaker]

I loved when the first iPod (5G iPod) offered video out: White was left, Yellow was right and Red was video... The start of the Apple problem. Not a word from the base. Wrong IS wrong(BTW, universally, YELLOW is always video).

According to Apple's Website you have the correct cable . . . I don't know what's wrong with your system, but obviously something is.

Just like any standard, the yellow is used for video and the white and red are for stereo audio.

[DiogenesLamp]

Jobs didn’t really invent anything that we know him for. He never really took a completely original concept and personally brought it into existence and popularity purely through his own blood, sweat and tears. This picture of innovation is a novel one, but it doesn’t describe one of our generation’s most successful visionaries in the least.

Instead, Steve Jobs was a man with arguably more unique talents. People with ideas are a dime a dozen and the nerds to build the ideas are graduating with fancy degrees faster than we can find jobs for them. However, people that can truly take an honest look into an industry and identify what it’s lacking and what customers would truly go crazy for, then make that vision a reality, are a rare breed. Jobs performed this task better than anyone else I can name.

It is this point right here that is the crux of the issue for me. How do you quantify this? What *IS* this quality?

How can you tell if he was the driving force behind any of this rather than the Chance Gardner that happen to be at the right place at the right time?

Take the Apple 2 for example. That is the product that launched the Apple empire. What was Jobs contribution to it? Without Wozniak to create such a wonderful design, where would Jobs be?

Perhaps his talent is pushing others to do great work? Perhaps he is inspirational to the people with whom he worked and somehow egged them on to do better than they would have done by themselves? Perhaps he was a sort of natural leader that people instinctively wanted to please.

I don't know. That is the picture that people present of him, but it occurs to me that he was also uniquely put into such a position where he could influence things. Who else gets launched to the CEO of a well to do corporation by what was ostensibly the work of his partner, and then has the means to sit around and think about how to make more money in the then very young computer industry? It seems like a bird's nest on the ground, where in every direction you turn there is money to be made. Who was *NOT* making money in the business at that time?

It is possible that many of the directions he pushed apple were more or less inevitable, and something that would have evolved out of the process at some point anyway.

Were they inevitable? To me they seem more evolutionary than revolutionary. Did he speed things up? Maybe. I don't know.

That is precisely the problem with figuring him out. His contributions are not something you can precisely put a finger on. They don't have clear demarcation lines. There doesn't seem much where you can say "See this? This right here? That was Jobs. No one else would have come up with this. "

My recollection is that his "NeXT" company didn't do so well under his leadership. He had the capital, he had the talent, but it just didn't gel for some reason. If he was the magic ingredient, why couldn't he replicate the success that Apple had? Eventually Apple bought it and solved all the company's problems.

So Apple was doing badly for awhile without him? Yeah, but having a couple of bad CEOs that didn't know how to make money is not proof that he was the only person who could turn the company around. Their fundamentals were good, and perhaps other people could have done as well, but they just didn't hire a decent one. That happens in a lot of industries. Technology advances were coming that would work in their favor.

I honestly do not know what to make of him, but he is certainly hyped a lot. Perhaps it is true, but I am distrustful of simply accepting when people tell me a man is a "Genius" yet I can't see any demonstrable signs of it for myself.

Last time the nation fell for that "Genius" line we got this guy, who is anything but.

But I am going to give more consideration to what you have told me, and i'm going to read up on the topic some more. Perhaps I will end up agreeing with you.

[Swordmaker]

No one wears watches anymore. That iWatch thing is gonna be a total flop.

There are will be 650 million iPhone users by the end of 2015, KoRn. Surveys indicate that 20% of them intend to buy an AppleWatch. If only 10% actually do buy an AppleWatch, that will be 65 million AppleWatch sales. Assuming all of them buy the lowest priced AppleWatch, that will be almost $23 billion in sales. If only 5% come through and buy, that will be around $11 Billion in sales. No matter how you look at tit, it will NOT be a flop.

[Swordmaker]

No one wears watches anymore. That iWatch thing is gonna be a total flop.

Oh, and the average retail price will be greater than that $350 minimum considering there will be AppleWatches ranging in price up to several thousand dollars. The largest single market segment at CES this year were wearable products. . . wrist wearables specifically. . . and most of the ones being shown lacked even the already announced functionality of the AppleWatch, much less the yet to be announced capabilities. None of them had anything close to ApplePay built in. . . few had the design sensibilities of the Apple offering, but were in the competitive price range of the AppleWatch low to mid range.

[KoRn]

You could be right, and probably are.

They likely have VERY well paid research to determine whether a product is market worthy. I’m just some guy running my mouth on the intrawebs. lol

I still don’t know of anyone under 40 that wears a watch these days. That COULD be a roadblock they run into. Who knows.

[Swordmaker]

Take the Apple 2 for example. That is the product that launched the Apple empire. What was Jobs contribution to it? Without Wozniak to create such a wonderful design, where would Jobs be?

Without Steve Jobs, there NEVER would have been an Apple II. It's as simple as that, Diogenes. Steve Wozniak was happy to GIVE his computers away. He has stated that as a FACT. Steve Jobs pushed him to sell them. FACT.

How can you tell if he was the driving force behind any of this rather than the Chance Gardner that happen to be at the right place at the right time?

Because the people who were THERE, said it was him. . . he was the asshole who kept pushing them to do things they REALLY did not want to do!

I don't know. That is the picture that people present of him, but it occurs to me that he was also uniquely put into such a position where he could influence things. Who else gets launched to the CEO of a well to do corporation by what was ostensibly the work of his partner, and then has the means to sit around and think about how to make more money in the then very young computer industry? It seems like a bird's nest on the ground, where in every direction you turn there is money to be made. Who was *NOT* making money in the business at that time?

You are completely MISCONSTRUING things to say that the "well to do corporation" was the work of his partner. Steve Wozniak was completely incapable of building a "well to do corporation" or even building the Apple II. Have you seen his products? They were bare circuit boards!

Wozniak wanted to sell the Apple I for about what they cost to make. . . to please his friends at the Home Brew Computer Club he and Jobs belonged to . . . and that was all. Woz really had no ambition to do more. It was Steve Jobs' vision that resulted in forming a business to build and manufacture them and sell them to retailers for a profit. If it had been up to Woz, Apple would never have existed. Once the Apple I was sold out, and the concept proved, there was a clamor for more but with more power. The Apple II needed to be a more polished effort.

To take a new product to quantity production outside a garage or even a storefront operation is an entirely DIFFERENT SKILL SET than what Steve Wozniak possessed. . . nor should he have been expected to have possessed such skills. Yes, he was a skilled and gifted amateur computer and circuit board designer and could get a computer down to as few components as possible. . . but he had NO IDEA about case design, manufacturing, or esthetics, accounting, or sales. NONE AT ALL. That was all pure Steve Jobs. . . and for him it was learning on the job. When he realized how much he didn't know, he brought in Mike Markula, who mentored him and became a partner as well. . . again, vision.

You really don't know what you are talking about on this, none at all. I have been a CEO. . . and I know that a self-trained engineer is never going to do any of that. Someone had to coordinate all of that and Steve Jobs did that until even that got beyond his skills and he brought someone in. Steve Wozniak did not see the reason for color. . . or a keyboard. . . he was happy with a computer you could program with jumpers and dip switches. It was Steve Jobs who told him they needed a computer for the "everyman" not just for computer club members, who Woz saw as their only potential customers. Again, the vision thing. It was Steve who convinced an unknown guy name Bill Gates to write a simple Basic for the Apple II. It was STEVE who insisted the Apple II had to have color output. . . Woz didn't really see the need. . . but Steve Jobs was foreseeing playing games on the computer in color.

You are right. YOU DON'T KNOW.

Steve Jobs was a polymath perfectionist. . . who would NOT let go. It was his VISION that built Apple. . . and changed SIX distinct industries as defined by the people IN those industries who interacted with him. . . and often FOUGHT with him and were frequently pissed off at him. . . but they still say he changed their industries for the better. Many of them did not like him. . . but they respected him. He got things done, on his terms, not theirs. Perhaps that was his true genius. He got what he wanted. He got what he went after. He KNEW what the public needed before the public knew they even wanted it. . . and went after providing it for them with a will. Jobs would not accept excuses for why something was not finished to his expectations. You either had it done, or you told him why you were making it better than he expected. Steve Jobs and Apple's mantra was to under promise and over deliver. . . and Apple has, for the most part, delivered on that.

Your recollection about NeXT is both correct and incorrect. He created the single most advanced computer of the day. . . and the single most advanced operating system. We know its descendant today as OS X. He made himself a Billionaire with NeXT and his investment in PiXAR. NeXT was Steve's baptism of fire that made him into the hardened business man he was when he returned to Apple. . . and negotiated the Lawsuit settlement with Microsoft that everyone today thinks was Microsoft bailing Apple out to the tune of $150 million. It was nothing of the kind, but rather the first of Steve Jobs coups, in which Jobs cleared the decks for Apple's future financed by Microsoft's paying royalties for infringing Apple patents and copyrights to the tune of at least a couple of billion dollars for the next five years. The $150 million was only the down payment.

As for hype. Hype is as hype does. . . we got Obama who was a fraud and incompetent who is in the process of bankrupting us.

Apple got Steve Jobs, who was anything but incompetent, who took a company with $2 billion dollars in liquid assets, who then cut product lines to the bone, introduced the single most successful computer in history, the iMac, and who then in ten short years took that company with a net worth of less than $10 billion and grew it into the single most valuable company in the world valued at almost $650 Billion, with $150 BILLION in CASH in the bank. . . more cash than the United States Treasury has on hand! A company that following his map now has $185 Billion in valuation after returning almost $300 Billion to its stockholders, a valuation greater than the next 3/4s of the New York Stock Exchange companies combined, a valuation greater than ALL the businesses in Russia, a valuation greater than 110 of the world's COUNTRIES combined, and revenues that in just one quarter eclipse what the company made in its entire first twenty years! Those are accomplishments of Steve Jobs. . . without even talking about what he did at NeXT, Pixar, Disney, or for the Music Industry, etc. . .

When a man performs as advertised, it really is not hype. Obama does not. Steve Jobs walked the walk.

And you say you think "someone else could have done just as well?" No, you are wrong! People are NOT cookie cutter cogs to be placed in machines to fulfill roles. It takes people with vision and a WILL to follow their vision to accomplish great things. Sometimes it takes an asshole who is a monomaniac perfectionist who knows how to say NO to things that sound like good ideas. Apple could have hired another MBA who, looking at the bottom line like he was taught in business school, borrowed money and run Apple into the ground, making more beige boxes. . . or taken the advice of sever consultants the board had hired and started making PC Clones under the Apple brand. . . and run the business into the ground. . . or the advice of other consultants and continued the Mac Clone market and cut prices to the bone. . . and licensed even more Mac Clones . . . and run Apple into bankruptcy as the clone business already was doing. Yeah, Diogenes just any old business person could have run it. . . like the previous successful sugar water salesmen and other CEOs who had been successful selling OTHER products were NOT successful leading Apple were NOT. Steve Jobs was unique.

As I told you, I've been a CEO. I've managed businesses. I still get paid for my business acumen. I've founded a few. I've founded and run a charity. People are not the same, and there are people who come along once in a generation or a century. Jobs was one of those. . . and we were lucky to have had him.

Was Steve Jobs a perfect human being? Not by a long shot. Would you want to be on the elevator as an Apple employee with him? Nope, that was a dangerous thing. You might not have a job after you rode four floors with him . . unless you could show him how you were benefiting Apple that day. Would you want to share a beer with him? Hell, I don't know. . . but I'd love to bounce ideas off of him. . . because he gave credit where credit was due. . . and if you had a great idea, he'd back you until it showed no promise or it worked. It may never make it into a product, but it might. . . but YOU had better argue strongly for it, not meekly. If you had a product he wanted for Apple, he'd buy it from you. He would not steal it. . . contrary to what some on here would claim. That's the purview of Microsoft's business practices. But he had little patience for incompetence. That's my take. As I said, Steve Jobs was a compulsive perfectionist. . . and it would not go out without his OK.

Ask yourself, how many other men have FOUR (or is it five, now) movies made about their lives within five years after their deaths. . . I don't think even JFK has had that many movies made so soon. . . Not to mention two or three DURING his life. . . with actors falling over themselves to play him? THAT is an iconic person. . . not a hyped fake.

[Swordmaker]

I still don’t know of anyone under 40 that wears a watch these days. That COULD be a roadblock they run into. Who knows.

Tell you what, KoRn, go into Target, Waldoworld, Costco, any mall, department stores, kiosks in the mall, etc., and look in their jewelry departments and look at what their largest sections are. . . you will find it is watches. Watches are a $13 billion industry in the US alone. . . even among young people. Check out QVC, SHQP, and other TV channels and see what they are selling and the selling prices. . . of watches such as Invicta, . . and look at the SIZE of the wrist watches they are selling. Some of them look as if they could double as headlights. . . or the visors on Diving Helmets. But they are selling like hotcakes. Priced anywhere from $70 to $1300 for huge watches with lots of complications with chained caps on the crowns and cages across the crystals. Some of them come with multiple watch slot, hermetically sealed dive cases to store your watch collection in. . . I'm not kidding. . . and some of these watches are bigger than the wrists they are worn on . . . and those are just the women's watches and the men's sizes are even bigger. They can be as much as an INCH thick! These are popular now.

Then check out the ads in the sunday paper for all the pacer wrist bands, health checking bands, Nike connectable straps, etc. The market is there. . .

[Swordmaker]

Yes, Jobs, upon his last return to Apple, eliminated some program for employee charitable giving.

Jobs never had any impact on "employee charitable giving." He could not affect that. He did close down company charitable giving programs that were out of control. The employees were free to form organizations to give as they chose. . . and the Apple Employees' Political Action Committee remained in place. That had nothing to do with the corporation at all and could not be law. Employees were free to donate or not. The AEPAC general gave to Democrats v Republicans in about an 80/20 ratio. . . which is about the same as all Tech companies' employee PACs' ratios. Not much to see here. Same old same old.